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Hunter builds
Overview Hunters are known for their pets, their long-range, sustained DPS, and their traps. The three trees of a Hunter are all viable for a hunter to choose for leveling, player versus player combat, or end game raids or instances, but since only two of the three trees allows for the complete use of talent points the player is forced to cross trees, hybridizing into other talent trees. The three trees all have options to offer for utility, open DPS, and survivability. Sponsor /sponsor}} Beast Mastery Beast Mastery offers the highest potential personal DPS in the game for hunters in the raiding environment. This statement is only true if said hunter can use his pet effectively and understands the importance of ranged attack speed in rotation. BM is also the fastest leveling build, as uptime is limited only by the health of your high-armor pet. Builds Well, as we all know...the potential builds have changed significantly since WotLK was released. The builds are much more varied than ever before. Without having gone into all the math to figure out exactly how much damage can be caused by each talent, I've put together what seems to be a logical build for level 80. The changes in the structure of the trees allow us Hunters to invest more heavily in the BM tree and still maximize our damage. With previous patches, a BM hunter needed to have significant points in the Marksmanship tree to be viable as a raid participant. Here, I've developed a build that goes deep into the BM tree, and uses only 19 points in Marksmanship to maximize DPS. The important thing to remember here is that your pet is the focus of most of your damage. This is why I chose to invest in Endurance Training instead of Improved Aspect of the Hawk 52/19/0 Beast Mastery Alternate BM 52/19 Build: Sustained DPS A slight modification on the 52/19 build above, this puts points into Improved Aspect of the Hawk, as well as maximizing Improved Revive Pet and Cobra Strikes. However, it forsakes Longevity, as well as substituting Improved Hunter's Mark for Focused Aim, lowering the hunter's already minimal hit rating cap. However, it is a good idea to have one hunter with Improved Hunter's Mark in your raid. This build is almost exclusively for sustained raid DPS, and does not invest in survivability talents when unnecessary. If you are careful and skilled, you would never need the extra endurance in a raid either way. 52/19/0 Beast Mastery Disadvantages of Beast Mastery A large part of the Hunter's damage is imbued in the pet, who must be alive in order to use Bestial Wrath/Beast Within. This is frequently seen as a fatal flaw to the build. This is especially the case in arenas, where your pet will often be the main target of the opponent. Seeing as it does not scale with resilience and only very little with your armor and stamina, it makes an easy target which severely cripples a BM hunter. In raids, the hunter alone should have no trouble keeping their pet alive with Mend Pet and careful control of the pet's actions (treat your pet as a player, if you wouldn't draw aggro from the Main Tank, neither should it). Should the pet die, the Beast Master can recover quickly and cheaply with Improved Revive Pet. Nevertheless, Beast Mastery play-style requires a significant amount of diligence in managing the pet's actions and threats on top of managing threats to the hunter. Marksmanship This strength of this tree lies in burst damage. Your shots are far slower than that of the BM hunter, but you hit quite a bit harder. This tree is also the land of PVP talents. Marksmanship builds tend to have lower overall sustained DPS and are less mana efficient than Beastmaster builds. Sample Marksmanship Raid build Standard raid build with steady shot - steady shot - steady shot - chimera shot rotation: 5/51/5 Survival Out of the three Talent Trees available to a Hunter, Survival is the least chosen spec. Survival Tree is mostly considered as the PvP tree due to the many abilities that help with Survival and Melee combat. But this Talent Tree if points are spent wisely can hold its own against the other Trees in terms of DPS and damage. Survival plays on the Hunter's main stats: Agility, Attack Power and Crit Chance. Survival/Marksmanship build The first thing Survival Hunters should know is that Explosive Shot is designed to be used instead of Arcane Shot since they both share a cooldown. This build is designed to give the Hunter maximum DPS for PvE. By dodging around abilities that increase Hunter's melee capabilities, which would be useless in PvE, this build is able to give the Hunter the three main stats needed by a Hunter. Because of Lightning Reflexes this build is optimal for high agility Hunters, and this in turn giving more Attack Power and Crit Chance to the Hunter. With Careful Aim and Hunter vs. Wild also giving more Attack Power to the Hunter these Talents in turn improve the effect of Expose Weakness which is activated when a Hunter Crits. So that the Hunter crits more to activate Expose Weakness and deal out more damage points have been put in Lethal Shots, Killer Instinct and Survival Instincts aswell as the possible +10% crit chance ability of Master Tactician. This build also takes advantage of talents that help you survive longer in raids hence the name of the Talent Tree. Points in Survivalist and Survival Instincts decrease the amount of damage you take and increase your health, after all you can't DPS when you are dead. With Survival Tactics the cooldown on Disengage is reduced which can be helpful if needed to be used alot on bosses that pull you into melee range, like Malygos. And one of the main reasons why every mana user will love to have a Survival Hunter in their group or raid is Hunting Party which gives mana regan buff to the raid when the Hunter crits, and with this build the Hunter should crit enough to keep the buff up 100% of the time. Note: Hunters using this build should make sure they are tracking the target they are fighting for the 5% increase to damage, stay at least 30 yards away from their target if possible for an increase of 6% damage on select attacks and always keep a Serpent Sting active on the target to have the chance to activate the Lock and Load talent. *Click Here for Build Disadvantages of Survival Expose Weakness is now only applicable to to the Hunter. Also, you may notice a slight decline in your damage compared to other builds because it takes more of an effort to be a good Survival DPS Hunter. Which build is best for ___? Heroics In heroic instances a hunter is required to CC targets, forcing them to either excel at kiting, or spec into a build with redundancy in case a trap is resisted. The main talents that give this are Readiness and Wyvern Sting, and to a lesser extent Scatter Shot. Note that having Trap Mastery can make things easier, but a trap being resisted or breaking is the biggest danger and it doesn't help with that at all. Raiding Beast Mastery is the first and foremost DPS raiding build. In fights where Pet Survivability is really difficult (and with higher gear levels), Survival becomes about equal. Survival scales well with the Agility your gear has on it, increasing your personal DPS very much through high Crit percentages and high Attack Power. If Surv Hunter with 800 Agility and a BM Hunter were in the same raid on Leotheras, but the BM Hunter's pet dies, and sometimes more than once, the advantage of Surv on that fight becomes clear. While Marks is also viable at high gear levels, Survival is THE alternative to BM. PvP The Hardcore PVP Hunters are generally Marks/Surv and may or may not take the health talent from the BM tree. Marks was designed as the PVP tree for hunters, and the design holds true, as it offers more burst DPS, less crit-reliant DPS, and the very utile Silencing Shot and Scatter Shot. Improved Concussive Shot is also a must-have for PvP. Solo DPS Beast Mastery and Marksman builds are both very viable soloing specs. Survival not completely bad, but killing can be slower, since you miss out on the Improved Multishot damage. Scatter shot is also very useful in soloing. Specifics To find specific opinions on the location of each and every talent point (or to provide your own), please visit Hunter Talent Discussion. Dramatically different builds than the ones listed in this article may be added to this article in the same style and neat format. Level 80 builds :The following builds are submitted by individual players. Their validity is not guaranteed. All *14 Tested Specs Each tree covered, even hybrid! (Artanis) Beast Mastery *51/13/7 (Grulloc of Moonguard) *PvE 52/12/7 (Elitist Jerks 1) *PvE 50/21/0 (Elitist Jerks 2) *PvE 52/14/5 (Elitist Jerks 3) *PvE 53/11/7 (Shotgirl of Terenas) Useful Macros AutoTrack Addon Pet Spec *PvE(56/15/0) (Fitz of Terenas) *PvE(53/18/0) (Klarr of Demon Soul) *PvE (50/21/0) (Bowblitzen of Demon Soul) *PvE (55/16/0) (Sasukke of Jubei'thos) *Relies less on chance(53/18/0) (Nocontroll of Silvermoon) *57/14/0 (Apitoo of Dawnbringer) *Exotic Pet Leveling (51/17/3) (Jæger of Dunemaul) Marksmanship *PvE(11/53/7) (Klarr of Demon Soul) *PVP(0/54/17) (Nocontroll of Silvermoon) *PVE (11/53/7) (Vulkar of Shandris) *PvE (16/54/1) (Talanos of Scilla) *PvP [7/53/11) (Spiritshot of Dentarg) Survival *PvE(7/13/51) (Thorinian of Thaurissan) *PvE(0/19/52) (Klarr of Demon Soul) *PvE(0/15/56) (Dazile of Durotan) *PvE (7/10/54) (Untested, use if you have waits in shot rotation) *PvE (1/19/51 (Talanos of Scilla) *PvE (4/16/51 (Spankysir of Azshara) Hybrid *PvE(5/33/33) (Rhegnar's Hybrid Raid Build) Category:Guides Category:Talents Category:Hunter talents